Sword Stone Table

by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)

  “It’s your call, son,” he said. “I can’t make you want to play more. I guess I could guilt you—tell you how badly your dad would’ve wanted to keep playing himself. But that’d be crass, huh?”

  He laughed. Gwen slid a cup of water in front of him. He took a long pull before he continued.

  “I’m glad I found you, though,” Jimmy said.

  “Yeah?” Arturo asked. “Why’s that?”

  “Got something that belongs to you,” Jimmy said, his tone deepening. “Well, to your family.” He patted Arturo’s shoulder. “Follow me.”

  The burger would wait. Arturo dropped a ten on the counter and told Gwen he’d be back, then followed the older man outside, toward the far end of the diner’s poorly lit parking lot. They stopped behind Jimmy’s beat-up Prius hatchback. Jimmy popped the trunk and leaned in, moving boxes and a few mitts and jerseys aside brusquely. Then Arturo saw what Jimmy was reaching for.

  At first, it seemed like any other bat Arturo had seen or held over the years. But when he looked more closely, Arturo felt a chill coat his skin. Felt himself being pulled back—to being a kid and watching his dad in the batting cages. Seeing him leave his bat propped up outside his parents’ bedroom. His father had loved that bat. Taken it with him wherever he went, like a kid’s blanket. The letters etched on the bat seemed to call to him—excalibur.

  How had he not realized the bat was missing? Not asked his mother where it ended up? Why were these memories flooding into his mind now?

  And why did it seem like the bat was glowing?

  “You okay?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Arturo said, shaking his head slightly, trying to ignore what he’d just seen and felt. “Just—uh, just seeing that takes me back, you know?”

  Jimmy pointed the bat at Arturo, handle out, a gentle smile on his face.

  “It’s yours,” Jimmy said. “It belongs with you.”

  “Why…why do you have it, Jimmy?” Arturo asked, trying to delay the moment he knew would come no matter what. “Why’ve you been holding on to this?”

  “Your dad asked me to hold on to it,” Jimmy said, his face growing ashen. “Said to take care of it. I dunno, honestly. At the moment, it just seemed like more silly-speak from him. He was always easily spooked, superstitious. I didn’t take him seriously. But when he handed it to me, he wasn’t joking. It was a few nights before the end of the series. Before he headed to the airport…”

  Jimmy trailed off. Arturo watched the older man look away and try to compose himself.

  “He said, ‘Jimmy, keep this, all right? Keep this safe,’ ” Jimmy said. “And me, I’m like, ‘Sure, sure, Umberto, whatever, let’s go.’ But he was not having it. He gripped my shoulders and said, ‘Jimmy, you keep this until you know, for sure, someone is ready to use it. Give it to my son. Give it to Arturo. But not as a boy. As a man.’ And—look, I know this sounds weird, but I just shrugged it off. I thought your dad was just on one of his weird trips, you know? I said ‘sure’ and took it, and that was it. Then he was dead and I forgot about the damn bat. It seemed like it was erased from my mind. But I took it with me, wherever I went, every team, every city. I carried it, but I didn’t think about it until now—until I saw your car parked outside. My gut told me you had gotten the call. Then it felt more urgent. Wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

  Arturo gripped the bat. For some reason he’d expected to feel something—a shock, a charge, anything. Some kind of kinetic connection to this thing that had once been his father’s. But he didn’t. It felt light. Powerful. But still like any other bat Arturo had held and swung over the past few years. He tried to mask his disappointment, but it must have shown on his face. Jimmy must’ve seen the wince that flickered across his expression.

  “Kid, what’d you expect?” Jimmy said, slapping his hand on Arturo’s shoulder. “Magic?”

  Arturo twirled the bat in his hand, still trying to capture something, anything.

  Then he felt it. His hands tingled—a low hum, a crackling energy shooting through them. At first Arturo thought of dropping the bat, but something kept his palms wrapped around it. He knew, at that moment, he would never let the bat out of his sight.

  He felt lighter, too. Felt the aches and pains of years of struggling through long seasons, losses, demotions, dejection—felt it all fade away. He felt younger. Clearer. The thought of swinging that bat—of running the bases, of catching a ball—felt almost new to him. Like he was about to grab his mitt and chase his dad to the park for another round of catch. He could almost hear his dad’s voice—rattling off lessons and suggestions as he launched another fly ball for Arturo to try to catch.

  Glove up.

  Eye on the ball.

  Put it where the ball will be, not where it is.

  These moments were real—he’d lived them. But they felt suddenly new to Arturo, as if he’d just awoken from a long slumber, having closed his eyes as a twelve-year-old boy who loved baseball, his father, and his life. Everything else—everything in between—felt like a blur now.

  “You up for one more trip?” Jimmy asked.

  Arturo glanced at his father’s old friend. Confused.

  “The Knights could use someone like you. Someone with your experience. And leadership,” Jimmy said, to Arturo’s surprise. But before he could question him, Jimmy was already patting Arturo on the shoulder and continuing. “Tell me, Artie—you ever play third?”

  Excerpt from Bleacher Report

  For Newly Minted 3B Arturo Reyes, Call-Up a Last Shot at Redemption

  Pete Fernandez | Athletics Minor League Reporter

  August 4, 2019

  Many longtime fans recall the sad tale of Umberto Reyes, the third-year rising-star Yankees’ shortstop who was murdered in cold blood on his way to catch a team flight to Atlanta to face off against the Braves in what ended up being a jaw-dropping Yankees loss in game seven of the World Series. The assailants were never found.

  But every story has its share of survivors, and for many years, followers of the game have watched and cheered for Reyes’s son, Arturo, who cobbled together a solid if unspectacular career in the minor leagues across various organizations. Many assumed that his baseball life—Reyes is 28—had peaked, and that the son of the SS with remarkable speed and wit and a bat that crackled like Clemente would go down as a footnote, mentioned only in relation to his father.

  “The raw skills were there, for sure, all the GMs and coaches saw it,” said Jimmy Merlin, a longtime minor-league manager—his last stint with the Double-A Charlotte Knights—and former teammate to the elder Reyes, who is now serving as a freelance adviser of sorts to the younger. “But when he got on the field, it just didn’t click. At his best, he was all right—did the basics. But it never elevated beyond mediocre or acceptable. Honestly, it was sad to see. We all figured his career was over before it started.”

  But all that seems to have changed over the past six months.

  Propelled by a .341 average in Double- and Triple-A appearances and a sure-handed defensive glove that seems at odds with previous performances, Reyes has positioned himself as not only an on-the-rise minor-league star but one on the very brink of the Major Leagues. In addition to his on-field rebirth, Reyes is a newlywed. He and his wife, Gwendolyn, are expecting their first child in October.

  “I just hope the big team is looking at what I’m doing,” Reyes said earlier this week after another stupendous performance for the Triple-A Kansas Mud Dogs, his most recent home after a run of success with the Double-A Knights. “I just put my head down, do the work and pray to God that I get that chance.”

  That chance may be coming before the end of the regular season, as the Oakland Athletics look to fill some slots in an infield decimated by injuries.

  * * *

  —

  The flight was delayed by three hours. But not
hing was going to sour this moment for Arturo. Nothing.

  Even with all the advance buzz and rumors, when Jimmy had called him, Arturo thought he was kidding. Thought it was just an ill-timed joke his dad’s old friend was playing on him. It couldn’t be true. But it was, wasn’t it?

  “No joke, kid, they want you,” Jimmy Merlin had said. Arturo felt like he could see the twinkle in the older man’s eye, even through the phone. “You’re an Oakland Athletic now.”

  Usually, when you got the call from the major league club, your minor-league manager took you aside and gave you the speech. It was, for many minor-league skippers, all the joy they got from a job that required them to keep prospects warm and fading veterans cold. Somehow, Jimmy Merlin, who’d given up his own managing job to oversee Arturo’s career for little money and even less autonomy, had gotten the chance to relay the message. It seemed to Arturo that Jimmy was happy to just be around. To pass along bits of advice when needed.

  “I’m just here to make sure things go the way they should,” he told Arturo more times than he could remember.

  That was the thing, Arturo thought—things did seem to be going okay. Better than okay. He tried not to think about it too much, though. To compare his baseball life before he gripped his dad’s old bat with the new world he was inhabiting now. It made him uneasy. A cold, aching anxiety that permeated every part of him. Like a child heading down a long hallway toward a slightly open door, unsure of what awaited on the other side.

  When he did follow the thread of his own mind, when he did think about the days before Excalibur—as he’d come to call the bat made by the small-time manufacturer of the same name—he felt like it was another life altogether, a story he’d been told. But it wasn’t. He’d lived it. That had been his life, and it all changed when he ran into an old friend at a fading diner.

  He pulled out his cell phone. She picked up on the second ring.

  “You okay?” Gwen asked, skipping the usual pleasantries. She knew Arturo wasn’t a phone person except when he had to be. If he was calling, something was up. But what was it?

  “Yeah, I’m at the airport,” Arturo said, his voice trailing off. “Just needed…to check in.”

  “Anchor time, huh?”

  He let out a dry laugh. Ever since they first got together—well, first started talking, sharing long, rambling calls from wherever Arturo ended up to Gwen—she’d joked in this way. Said she was Arturo’s rock. At first he just took it as flirting, but eventually he found it to be true. He needed her. He relied on Gwen’s sharp brain and empathy. He loved her laugh and how she looked at the world. She kept him in place—balanced. She was his anchor.

  After a few months of late-night calls and constant texting, Arturo made a decision. He scraped into his savings account and made a trip to see her. They had barely been apart since. Until now.

  “Yeah, I’m just thinking about everything,” Arturo said. “Everything that’s happened.”

  “Don’t think about it too much,” she said, her voice hushed. “You deserve this, okay? Just enjoy it. This is what you’ve always wanted. Always dreamed about. Don’t look over your shoulder too much.”

  “You’re right,” he said. She was, he knew that. She was always right. So why was he obsessing over this—even after hanging up with Gwen, throughout the long process of boarding, takeoff, and flight? Thinking about that moment in the diner with a man he considered an old family friend?

  An old friend who just happened to have his father’s bat in his trunk.

  An old friend who had since refused to leave his side.

  Arturo shook the thought from his mind as he sped down the long hallway underneath Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the aging stadium the Oakland Athletics called home. He was late. The game was about to start and he needed to change, meet his new team, and—if he was being honest with himself—prepare to sit in the dugout for nine innings and watch the starters close out a three-game series against the Astros.

  But he’d made it. Not just here, now, but to the majors. He wasn’t just the kid who never lived up to his papi’s legend. He was the man who’d made it to the majors, too. If he did well enough, he allowed himself to think, he might even carve out a legend of his own.

  “Hey, you Reyes?” Arturo didn’t recognize the face poking out of the locker-room door, but he was wearing an Athletics uniform. One of the coaches, for sure.

  Arturo nodded and stopped at the door as he tried to catch his breath, his equipment bag hanging over his shoulder.

  He didn’t get the chance. The coach dragged him in, shaking his head vigorously.

  “Tony in Travel told me your flight was fucked,” the coach said. “But that’s your problem. Your locker’s over there—get suited up and ready in five. We need to be outside in ten.”

  Arturo nodded and fought off the urge to introduce himself to the other players. This wasn’t the minors anymore. He had a job to do. But he didn’t fight back the smile that spread across his face as he reached his locker—his locker!—and pulled Excalibur out of his bag. He felt a familiar charge and allowed himself a second to let it course through him. Even if he didn’t take the field tonight, he would soon. Soon he’d show his teammates who he was. Not just “Oh, Umberto Reyes’s kid, right?” No. A man unto himself.

  “Nice bat.”

  The voice startled Arturo. He turned around. What he saw almost sent his knees buckling. He heard Excalibur drop to the ground with a thunk. He could hear rustling as the other players turned toward the noise. But that was all background to him now. Secondary to the face that stood before him.

  The face he’d memorized. The dark, thin eyebrows. The feline eyes. The thin, lipless smile. The dark hair that seemed otherworldly and menacing.

  But…how?

  “Hey, you okay?” the man said, crouching down to pick up Excalibur. He handed the bat to Arturo, who tried not to snatch it back. “You’re new, right? Reyes?”

  Arturo nodded, his eyes wide, unblinking. He saw the man extend his hand.

  “Cool, man, cool—welcome to the A’s,” he said, clearly befuddled by Arturo’s reaction but trying his best to be welcoming and friendly. But that face—a living, breathing version of the crumpled piece of paper Arturo still had. Of a man that existed only in his nightmares, now come alive.

  He spoke again. The words that escaped his mouth would haunt Arturo for the rest of his life.

  “Tino Mordred, man, good to meet you. I think our dads played together on the Yankees. Did he ever mention my dad?”

  Before Arturo could respond, his mouth agape, a distant voice called. The game was starting.

  It was happening. The moment Arturo had always dreamed of was seconds away. But his eyes were locked on this man, a few years younger than him, who wore the face of a murderer and the smile of an innocent.

  He fought back a scream as the sellout crowd signaled the beginning of the game.

  * * *

  —

  The hotel room TV flickered, the only light in the space. Arturo sat up in bed. He glanced around the room, absorbing where he was. Kansas City. In another swanky room in a series of swanky rooms on his way to becoming everything he’d dreamed of. Everything his father had dreamed of.

  A long shape seemed to lurch up from the darkness as the television light captured it. Arturo knew what it was. Knew what was there. Always had to know.

  The bat.

  Excalibur.

  He’d been with the Athletics for more than a month. Had managed to parlay a few weeks of solid reserve play into, as of tomorrow’s game, a starting third base job. The press loved him. His teammates loved him. His glove was sticky and his bat was hot. People were starting to whisper about Arturo Reyes. And not just Arturo Reyes, son of Umberto. Jimmy had said it would only be a matter of time.

  But the bat.

  I
t’d all changed for him that night outside of the diner. He couldn’t deny it. He’d gone from sleepwalking through the tail end of a forgettable career to finally finding himself able to do the things he only dreamed of. But how? Why? It couldn’t be the bat. It was impossible, Arturo knew. But he couldn’t deny the feeling he got when his hands gripped it. He couldn’t deny how his vision, his own baseball instincts, seemed to sharpen and clarify when he was using it. So much so, he thought, that even when he was on the field—playing defense—he still felt empowered and alive.

  No way, he thought.

  He’d tried to bring it up to Jimmy a few times, but his old friend—his father’s old friend—shrugged it off.

  “It’s not the bat, kid, it’s you,” Jimmy Merlin said over and over. “The second you see that, then we’ll really be cooking.”

  Arturo stood up. He couldn’t sleep. But it wasn’t because of the bat. If it had somehow imbued him with the abilities his father had left behind for him, he could deal with that. He’d welcome it, after years of trying and failing, to the point of becoming a husk of the man he knew he was. The man that only Gwen had seemed to recognize at the end there, sitting at the diner, defeated. But there was something else. Something darker and nebulous that seemed to float above every hit, every win, every smile.

  His teammate, Tino Morded, seemed kind. He was helpful. He’d even taken time out of his own routine to introduce Arturo to his teammates and show him around the A’s facilities. But that face. It haunted Arturo. It resembled the character sketch so closely it sent a cold chill through his entire body.

  Tino was an average player. Some would call him “good for the locker room”—a cheerleader who was always quick with a pat on the shoulder and a high five. But he lacked fire. He could hit a bit, was decent on defense—you name it. He combined just enough of everything to merit a spot on a major league roster. In many ways, he reminded Arturo of himself, before the big decline. Before he’d basically given up. So why did Tino haunt Arturo so? Could it be a coincidence? Just his mind playing tricks on him? He had to know. And now was as good a time as any.